What's the worst tattoo you've ever seen? Sometimes I see the things people tattoo onto themselves and I'm simply blown away by their complete absence of taste. Or common sense. Or shame. Or…..anything.

In my long life of seeing tattoos, a couple stand out, and I wish I had photographic accompaniment:

1. A dotted line around the neck with the phrase "CUT HERE". Nothing says "I don't plan to live long enough for this tattoo to become an albatross" quite like neck tats.

2. A butterfly and a Sister Hazel logo. WHO IN THE FUCK GETS A SISTER HAZEL TATTOO?? What, were they out of Candlebox tattoos? Was the Hootie and the Blowfish one too mainstream? Band tattoos are universally a bad idea. That is a rule.

3. "Stretch out and wait" tattooed in massive letters around a young man's torso. Caveat: this tattoo would be perfectly acceptable except that the wearer was a straight man. Nothing says "More gay sex, please!" like tattooed Smiths lyrics. Therefore this person made a significant tactical error.

4. Chestpieces: all. Nothing bothers me more than perfectly cromulent titties ruined by awful chestpieces. And since all chestpieces are awful, they inherently ruin titties. Doves, nautical stars, flaming skulls, or whatever ridiculous Sailor Jerry crap you found on Livejournal should not be emblazoned on your cans. Trust me. Just trust me.

This site provides some inspiration, but I'm sure you don't need it. You've seen appalling tattoos. Share them with us.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Rants.
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16 Responses to “You know that's permanent, right?”

Let's just get it out of the way, shall we?: The barbed wire armband-type-thing. Nothing quite says "phony tough" quite like one of those.

Anything oriental/asian. Chances are QUITE LIKELY that it doesn't say or convey what you THINK it does.

Lastly, it's always a bad idea to showcase your sports loyalties. Perhaps that's the major drawback to living here in Chicago at this particular moment. Nothing evokes civic pride like the Bears, it's retarded to see a major city like ours reduced to an over-zealous high school rally. Last night (*not kidding), the local news tried to capture the "fever pitch" by showing us some fat, meatball douchebag's newest tattoo: every signature of every Bears player from this year's team on his back. Wish I were making that up.

Lastly, i think this falls under the category of best tattoo ever, but I know a guy who has a tattoo of a charging rhino with a great white shark on it's back shooting flames out it's mouth. The backdrop is a city in flames. It takes up about half his back. I literally almost shit myself laughing so hard when i saw it.

Also: if you're not a tattoo artist, you have no business doing your own tattoos. Especially when you can't tattoo with your left hand and therefore end up with a left arm covered in shitty, blotchy, nearly unrecognizable square-inch tattoos of expletives, kitchen appliances, cartoon characters, and commonplace symbols.

I actually once saw a dude with a whole-calf tattoo of a busty (as in, breasts-larger-than-head) anime catgirl. With a tail. That was passed between her legs.

I have always wondered how many days it took him to realize that the tail (which wasn't furry, or anything) looked EXACTLY like a giant cock, and also? How many days he spent crying and exfoliating and cutting up the skin on his leg once he realized, because he was the kind of total fucking homophobic jackass that makes most frat boys seem rational and liberal-minded.

About 15 years ago, two small-town neo-Nazis were arrested on some charge grave enough to necessitate a trial. There was a picture of the two of them in the courtroom circulating through the papers, and one of them had "Hi, Hitler!" tattooed on his FOREHEAD.

Because if you're going to be stupid enough to join a dead political party whose platforms you don't remotely understand, you might as well go all the way and misinterpret its salute for a friendly wave … and then misinterpret its language to the point you confuse "heil" with "hi!" … and then tattoo the evidence of your abject retardation on your FOREHEAD.

I don't know if this counts because it was not an actual tattoo, but once I was flipping through a book of sample designs at a tattoo parlor and saw a picture that at first glance appeared to be a pink butterfly. Then after looking at it for two more seconds I realized that, while it was supposed to look like a butterfly, it was evident that it was also supposed to look like a huge, pink, surprisingly accurate vagina complete with labia "wings". Yikes.